A successful mission completed

Force and Destiny: The Lost General

Force and Destiny: The Lost General As role-playing practice for my English theatre arts class, I ran a FFG Star Wars RPG session for the students. If playing a space swashbuckling character who might also be an alien or a droid does NOT stimulate their acting chops, I have no idea what will! Although it was technically a Force and Destiny game, we had character types from Edge of the Empire too, thanks to the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets. It was the same pregen sheets I had used in a class earlier in the year. Dramatis Personae Merick, female Zabrak Guardian/Armorer – Veronica and Siew Yee Malea, female Human Warrior/Starfighter Ace – Haziqah and Syafikah Koogik, female Rodian Explorer/Big Game Hunter – Syakirah Byt, female Twilek Technician/Outlaw Tech – Nadhira Kree, female Human Smuggler/Pilot – Amelia Flames, female Droid Soldier/Commando – Siti Aisyah Martial Law on Zaadja! With the Empire clamping down hard on the remote system such […]

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Mini Six: Debacle in the Amazon

Mini Six: Debacle in the Amazon

Mini Six: Doom Agents 02 Debacle in the Amazon This marks the first time my students have played a second game in a single campaign, although they all played new characters because of a TPK in their first session. Dramatis Personae Agent Trolala Zelimkhanov, a Chechen driver – Nasha and Nurul Ain Agent Nancy Nassirian, an Iranian fixer – Syafiq and Weng Zun Agent Adam Mbokota, a South African shooter – Athirah and Sabrina Agent Adrien Nicolas, a French hacker – Malvinder and Asyraaf A year after the incident in Fukushima, a fresh new group of agents were sent deep into the Amazon in South America. Command was suspicious of the construction of a manufacturing plant owned by the multi-national corporation Eternitech located by the Amazon river. Trolala Zelimkhanov, the elegantly dressed agent, drove their pink Ford Ranger along the private road that would take them to the Eternitech factory. […]

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I hope they don't TPK

Mini Six: The Seaside Catastrophe

And so it came to pass that I was given the opportunity to present my ideas for tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) as a language learning tool to the workplace. During the workshop, I also ran a Mini Six session for the participants. For the first time ever, I gamemastered (GM) an RPG session for colleagues, which was something I never thought I would do. This entry chronicles the epic events that transpired in-game during the session: Mini Six: Agents of CIL The Seaside Catastrophe If this actual play report sounds familiar, then it is because it is the same scenario I ran for my class last month. This time though, the pregenerated player characters (PCs) consisted of a whole new mix of agents. Dramatis Personae Alex and Farahhein as Agent Mustonen the Finnish combat medic Sareepa and Masturah as Agent Khoo the Malaysian sniper Ivy and Angela as Agent Takeuchi […]

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Mini Six: A Day By The Sea

Mini Six: A Day By The Sea

Mini Six: Doom Agents 01 A Day by the Sea For the third time I ran a tabletop RPG session for my class using the Mini Six system, and this time I have integrated it with the English curriculum we had. The week’s lesson theme was Natural Disaster and I also had to teach them about Descriptive Essays. The RPG became a teaching tool in this situation, because students were able to interact verbally with each other in the context of the narrative. I did some research on the seaside towns in Fukushima, Japan to prepare for the session. During the game they also had to roll dice to determine that the action they declared succeeded or failed. And then had to write their game experiences as in-universe stories for homework using a structured set of questions I sent them via Google Forms. Dramatis Personae Sabrina as Berry, the scientist Athirah […]

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Irfan loves the Westward dice

SWD6: Out of the Red

Time is the Hunter Episode 06: Out of the Red Continuing the adventure I ran for Ain and Irfan last December… Bounty hunter Jax Hunt and amnesiac lady who called herself Iris Helena were waiting in the Corellian Engineering Corporation VCX-100 light freighter assigned to them, the Screeching Arrow, by the rebel fleet when the Togorian rebel coordinator Meow Skywalker came to them with a job: “The mission will require you to travel to the Chandrila system in the Core Worlds to extract Imperial bureaucrat Ton Kelauae, his wife Aklu and his daughter Wencie. Land at Nayli Spaceport. The Kelauaes are holed up in Apartment 7C, Blackback Building. The Empire is looking for them and it will be a matter of time before they are discovered. Get to them before the Empire does and bring them back here.” Then they went off on their mission…   And Now, a Standoff! […]

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Young roleplaying gamers

BFF: The Free Wizards of the Clave

The last day of Ramadhan, Irfan taught cousin Aiman to play RPG, specifically BareBones Fantasy (BBF). With the Eid Tabletop RPG Travel Pack I brought, I gamemastered an impromptu session for the cousins in the morning. Irfan tweaked his old player character (PC) Jake Hastur to be the Halfling wizard Drego Andre. Aiman adapted a pre-generated character from the BBF rule book to be an Elven wizard who called himself Johnson Jones. Session 01: The Cave in the Clave The Crossing The two free Wizards Drego and Johnson were travelling the thick woods on foot in the Emondran Clave of the Keranak Kingdoms. (Presumably Johnson is an Emon Elf.) It was getting dark but there was no place for them to hole up and camp. There were large trees and thick brush everywhere. They came across a river which flowed dangerously fast. If you fell in the water, you would […]

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Amani as Byt, Faeezah as Koogik, Nailah as Malea, Adha as Merick, Saiful as Vonnick, Ridzuan as Salporin

Force and Destiny: Jungle in the Sky

I was finally able to run another role-playing game session for my students for an English Language speaking exercise, the first for this semester. Probably no other games will be run because it is already quite late in the semester for other sessions. Students will be concentrating on their finals. Although it was technically a Force and Destiny game, we had character types from Edge of the Empire too, thanks to the Legends of the Galaxy pregenerated character sheets. Force and Destiny: Jungle in the Sky The GALACTIC CIVIL WAR rages across the Empire! Thousands of suspected rebel agents have been rounded up and imprisoned by the IMPERIAL SECURITY BUREAU in secret prisons across the galaxy.         Many innocent citizens have disappeared because of the Empire’s evil wrath, including SENATOR GAR LODOS from the DURO system. With little time to spare, the REBEL ALLIANCE has sent an extraction team to […]

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The final battle

EOTE: Problem Child

Edge of the Empire: Problem Child Dramatis Personae: Amri as Grabow, male Wookiee doctor Ijam as Matwe, male human smuggler pilot Fazrie as Lumpy, male Wookiee mercenary soldier Just as it was more than 20 years ago in Sitiawan when a bunch of unfamiliar people asked if I could run Star Wars RPG for them, here I am in the same situation in Sitiawan where online friends I have never met before asked me to run a Star Wars RPG session for them! No big deal to me: it is a great way to make lasting friends! Unfamiliar with any form of Star Wars RPG, I brought the Edge of the Empire and Force and Destiny rulebooks along with some sourcebooks, the FFG narrative dice set, Force tokens and my trusty homemade paperminis. I forgot to bring the percentile dice so I used the phone dice roller app. I thought […]

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Oh hey! Look! It’s Jax Hunt’s Relby-k23 blaster

SWD6: The Chandrila Extraction Fiasco

Time is the Hunter Episode 05: The Chandrila Extraction Fiasco After their rescue of the rebel agent known as “The Skywalker”, who turned out to be a Togorian named Meow Skywalker, bounty hunter Jax Hunt (played by Irfan) and the amnesiac lady who then named herself Iris Helena (played by Ain) were taken aboart the VCX-100 frieghter Screeching Arrow to rendezvous with a Nebulon-B escort frigate at an unknown location in deep space. After three days of being cooped up in the Arrow, Meow finally approached them with a mission. “The mission will require you to travel to the Chandrila system in the Core Worlds to extract Imperial bureaucrat Ton Kelauae, his wife Aklu and his daughter Wencie. Land at Nayli Spaceport. The Kelauaes are holed up in Apartment 7C, Blackback Building. The Empire is looking for them and it will be a matter of time before they are discovered. […]

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View from the Peanut Gallery

Mini Six: Shadows Through The Mist

I have always stated that tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) can be amazing teaching tools, not only for language purposes but to develop critical thinking skills, social skills and general knowledge. Yesterday, I finally ran a game in an English for General Purposes class to see the students could be engaged enough for them to communicate with each other and me without being shy. The Setup Seeing that polyhedral dice were rare in these here parts, I thought I would run a game that used the ubiquitous six-sided dice. Thus, AntiPaladin Games’ Mini Six was chosen. Besides, the system is based on West End Games’ D6 system which runs the Star Wars RPG which I have been familiar with for the last 26 years. The previous week the students and I had agreed to participate after briefly explaining to them what the game is, how it would be played and what […]

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Strrikeforce Enteague

SWD6: Doublecross

Strikeforce Enteague Episode 08: Doublecross After their mission to Driscall, bouny hunters Shanna Toarinar and Ace Browning Crossfire along with the pirate Phoenix Avalon were assigned a new pilot, the Quarren hot dogger ace Dorniekke Nels and a temporary member, the elderly former Imperial Star Destroyer Captain Robetre. Their commander Drew Greyhelm informed them that one of their spies Cal Tynblade had discovered the location of the Imperial transport Rectifier packed with weapons and supplies which had been lost in the Kolben Asteroid Field. They were to commandeer it to the rebel outpost on Liesson for Alliance use. The Ambush at Kolben The Nexus Point, piloted by Dorniekke, entered the Kolben field while Ace scanned for the location of the Rectifier. It had been parked in a cave in a large asteroid. Ace and Phoenix donned spacesuits, cycled the airlock and pushed out toward the asteroid in space. As they close […]

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Strrikeforce Enteague

SWD6: Battle Among the Clouds

Strikeforce Enteague Episode 07 Battle Among the Clouds A CRY FOR HELP FROM IGMALAR! Drew Greyhelm received a signal from Rebel spy Ooogle Flutzgle at the swamp planet of Igmalar in the Enteague Sector. He had important information for the Alliance. Fresh from their mission to Belderone, Shanna Toarninar the bounty hunter and Viveede Briylle Colore the star pilot were assigned to meet the spy in Igmalar City to assess how dire this information was. The Igmalar City Imperative Viveede set the Nexus Point down in Igmalar City under a false ship ID. The city administrated the harvesting and processing of pharmaceutical materiel from the swamps of the planet and was crawling with Imperials. The local sapient species were the Grenben, who once built the city on a tall, flat mesa that towered over the rest of the swampland, and had been reduced to slaves in their own homes by […]

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Strrikeforce Enteague

SWD6: Betrayal

Strikeforce Enteague Episode 06 Betrayal After their little bounty hunting side job, the team returned to Enteague Minor to discover that Commander Drew Greyhelm had added a new member to their ranks, the human star pilot Viveede Briylle Colore. Commander Greyhelm assigned Shanna Toarinar and Phoenix Avalon a new mission. Viveede would pilot them to the Belderone system to extract a person named Derin Heightson, who happened to be Phoenix’s best friend from when they were both seven until they went their separate ways at fifteen. Phoenix lost track on Derin. It appeared when Phoenix began his career as a space pirate, Derin had built a life for himself on Belderone. In hyperspace, they wondered what the semi-disassembled assassin droid with a riot gun doing in a heap beside the doorway in the Nexus Point‘s common room. Viveede told them Drew ordered the dangerous machine to be scrapped. For some […]

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Strrikeforce Enteague

SWD6: The Rogue Lieutenant

Strikeforce Enteague Episode 05 The Rogue Lieutenant After their previous adventure to the “illusory” planet of Zarligrenor, the strikeforce decided to take a week off at the Ginuvar system located also in the Enteague Sector. Moonlighting at Ginuvar Ginuvar was a patchwork of territories belonging to galactic and local corporations such as Industrial Automaton, SoroSuub, BlasTech, Neurosaav and Koensayr. Ginuvar’s seas were a broth of toxic compounds and most of her land were a plethora of factory complexes, power generation stations, arcologies and atmosphere scrubbers. The Nexus Point however landed in the planetary capital of Porzohal, a city built in the Green Zone, the only territory on Ginuvar still with a green and natural ecosystem, jungles and grasslands and all in the planet’s equatorial zone. Phoenix Avalon and Jon Dean thought that they should let their bounty hunting team-mates Shanna Toarinar and Ace Browning Crossfire take the lead and get […]

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Strrikeforce Enteague

SWD6: The Test of Truth Part 2

Strikeforce Enteague Episode 04B The Test of Truth Part 2 Click here for The Test of Truth Part 1! On their transport mission, the Nexus Point has crashed on an uncharted planet! Passenger Trace Traverse has disappeared! Their weapons are disabled! Unknown forces are closing in on the party! The mission (and the game session) concludes. The campaign, however, continues.

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Nasi Lemak Protocol

The Man From Counter Possession

Episode 1 The Man From Counter Possession On this slow lazy Sunday afternoon, after binge watching the new series Stranger Things which I had described elsewhere as “totally a Laundry RPG scenario set in America, where Black Chamber operatives in the Department of Energy attempt to contain their screw up in a small town in Ohio”, I thought I would sit down with Irfan to generate a Laundry RPG character. And if I had the time, then I would run a short, simple scenario for him. The Laundry RPG is based on Charles Stross’s The Laundry Files novel series, which is a delightful mashup of unspeakable horror and droll British humour, where the world of espionage meets the Cthulhu Mythos. It uses the Basic Role Playing (BRP) system used by Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Pendragon and Stormbringer RPGs. Irfan created a 25-year-old British grad student named Dustin Hopkins, a Capital […]

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